Prayers or Pity
by I-Dont-Ship-I-Yacht
Summary: One shot. Wrote this for my friend, it's like her idea of what happened after 8.20.


**This is a one-shot because my friend (hey Rocks) wanted me to. It's like, what Lorraine would've done after that moment with Nikki 8.20. There will be swearing because swearing is good and I like swearing, but other than that it's nice and squeaky-clean and suitable for the whole family. (Soz.) Unfortunately, I don't own anything at all. The characters belong to like the BBC or something, the idea belongs to Rocks.**

**If you would like to leave a comment I will unreservedly love you for the rest of my life. If you're going to read and not leave a comment I will still love you unreservedly for the rest of my life.**

**(Also, don't expect me to update Scars any time soon as I'm going to away tomorrow.)**

**Prayers or Pity**

I close my bedroom door behind myself. And I don't turn on the light. Because there's still just enough cool sunlight seeping through the heavily curtained windows. So that it's not dark, but it's not properly light either. So that I'm not alone in the shadows with nothing but my thoughts, but there's certainly no bright, cutting clarity. I don't want to be able to think any more, to drive myself half insane, the same thing whirling around my head. Over and over and over. If ignorance is bliss, a confused semi-consciousness is hell.

And so I balance the bottle of red wine on the floor by my feet. And place the tall-stemmed glass beside it. And I sink down onto the bed, sitting at the very edge, my head in my hands. Ready to temporarily exorcise these daemons that are irrepressibly growing stronger. My heart not quite racing, instead pumping out an unsteady, unsettling rhythm that seems to reverberate through my head. I breathe in, and then out.

I hold my hands in front of me. Looking at them carefully. My hands are undoubtedly trembling. I try to breathe normally.

No. Get a fucking grip. I bite down on my bottom lip, and cross my arms across my chest. Pretending that my hands aren't uncontrollably shaking. I breathe in, feeling my chest pressing against my arms. Feeling my heart just beginning to race a little faster. I wonder if I close my eyes I'll be able to tell myself lies, convince myself that someone else is holding me. Just one more little white lie. Would it feel different if the arms wrapped across my chest belonged to someone else? Would I feel different? I don't know. I'm not sure if I can remember the last time someone just...held me. Held me so tight that they might be able to feel my heartbeat, reminding them that I'm alive, that I'm human. I'm not sure if I've ever been held like that. And I'm certainly not sure if I'd like it. I almost definitely wouldn't. I tell myself that I'd feel suffocating panic pressing down upon my lungs, foreign skin scratching against my own. The thought makes my own skin crawl a little, repulsed. I tell myself that I'm better off here, alone. Me and the alcohol.

All the same, I can feel tears welling behind my eyes, stinging me. But I'm an expert at stopping them from falling. Even here, alone in my own bedroom, I'm blinking them away furiously. I'm alone, it doesn't even matter if I cry or not. If I cry or not, I'm still alone...

No. Don't cry. Please, no. I'm being stupid.

I need a drink.

I uncross my arms. And my hands are shaking now. Really shaking. I feel sick. Sick with myself, sick with all these nameless, faceless things I'm feeling, jumbled up within my chest. I reach down blindly, my palms feel hot as they collide with the cool neck of the bottle. I take a deep, steadying breath. And open the draw beside my bed, leaving it open. Corkscrew in my hand. Quickly opening the bottle, my hands suddenly almost steady. Purposeful. I pour a glass. Then a bit more. And a bit more. And I sip it slowly. I close my eyes, ignoring the sound of my heart banging around my head. Then faster, until I can barely taste it anymore. Tipping my head back, swallowing the last dregs of the wine too quickly. And suddenly the glass is empty and I can no longer feel tiny waves of blood red liquid pressing against my upper lip. And I'm blindly placing it on the bedside table. I breathe in, and then I breathe out. Trying to steady my racing heartbeat.

I feel a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to be sick. Sweating, blinding. For an instant I almost want to vomit, just to clear my churning stomach. But I bite it all back down.

"Jesus." I murmur, my breath hissing a little behind my teeth. A nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that the god I don't believe in won't save me now. As I'm running my hands through my hair, roughly ruffling my fingers through my blonde curls. Thinking of her. Her smile and her lips and her eyes. And the softness of her voice when she spoke to me. Nervously asking me if I wanted to go for a drink with her. God. Oh god. And, if I were to touch her, her skin might be just as soft. Her skin...

"No. No. Not attracted. You're not attracted to her...No." I tell myself, over and over. Rubbing my eyes, until I can feel my mascara smudging over my cheeks. And I pour another glass of wine. Barely letting the liquid hit the cool glass before I'm knocking it back. And I begin to pour another glass, sloppy now, hands shaking. And then I stop, wobbling the bottle upright again as I gulp back the drop of blood red wine, like pooled blood, in the bottom of the glass. And then I drink straight from the bottle instead, feeling it hit the back of my throat, over and over again as I gulp it back. Tears blindly streaming down my face now, pooling in the corners of my eyes as I drink. And then I blink again, leaning unsteadily forwards and slamming the bottle back down onto the floorboards. I dig my nails into my palms. Creating little red half-moon shapes into my skin, already rimmed with miniature purple bruises.

And I think about slipping off my six-inch heels. Red soles and Italian leather and French design. A thousand pounds and they do nothing but hurt my feet. And I'm moving a little, but instead of taking off my shoes and wriggling my toes and stretching the aching arches of my feet, I'm slipping off my grey blazer. Beginning to unbutton my shirt. Loosening the collar. My shaking hands fumbling, struggling with the skinny black tie, looped like a noose around my neck. Impatiently tugging at it, unbuttoning one...two more tiny, pearly buttons. And I'm wriggling out of my skirt too. Sticky leather falling to the floor. Leaving me half naked. Bare legs, messy collar, loose tie. As though I might just be a scruffy schoolgirl again. Only the shoes on my feet reminding me of how exactly far I've come.

And then I fall straight back against the freezing cold, hot red silk of my bed. I close my eyes. And try to think of precisely nothing at all.

It doesn't work, of course.

I suddenly realise that my bedroom is dark, the setting sun finally sliding away. I feel a slow chill of goosebumps, the remnants of a childhood phobia, trickle down my back as I lean across the bed and click on the lights that hover against every wall. And instantly the scarlet light seems to seep from the dark wood panelling itself. Reaching for the bottle on the floor, I take a long gulp. Hating myself for choosing such a sickly drink. Why not vodka? Cheap, nasty vodka. Gets me drunk twice as fast, with the added benefit of feeling as though I'm swallowing back paint stripper. All the same, the wine dulls my senses. Just enough that I can lean back against the crowding pillows and almost breathe steadily again. The alcohol is seeping into my bloodstream now.

But when I close my eyes, I feel as though the volume of my body has been turned right up to the maximum. Some sort of emotional floodgate swung open. And I can feel...too much. I can feel my skin dully screaming to be touched, a deep-rooted ache that starts in the bleeding marrows of my bone and cracks through layers of bone and muscle. Fault lines running throughout my body. Reminding me of precisely how much everything hurts. But I'm not crying anymore. This is different. Dry-throated, blinding, suffocating.

And all I can see is the disappointment and embarrassment dripping from her eyes as she looked at me, and then left Michael's office. And something else too. Something I don't have a name for yet. Why couldn't I do something? Say something, anything. She might've got the right idea though. That I was shocked. That I want to go for that drink. No. The wrong idea. She might've got the wrong idea, thought that I want to go for that drink with her. I really, really want to go for that drink with her. No. No. No. God help me.

I cross my arms across my chest again, hugging myself. Pushing away thoughts of Nikki. Instead just praying for someone, anyone, to come here right now and hold me. Snuggle beside me and let me whisper all the terrible things in my head to them, knowing that they will never tell another soul. That they'll just hold me, and I'll inexplicably be safe.

But no. If it were a real person, real, sweating physical contact, I could never do it. It's always been the same. I've always been the same. Twenty years, and have I really changed at all? Twenty years ago I would flinch away from my mother's hugs, wriggling from her arms. Refusing even to hold my sister's hand. Drawing back into myself, perfecting a stony exterior to tell the world to keep their distance. Icy queen of freezing glares and slipping away before I get in too deep. Today, I couldn't even slide away my discomfort with a few well chosen, effortlessly smooth words. Instead I froze. Dumbfounded, suddenly silent in my panic. So maybe I have changed after all. And not for the better.

I kick off my heels.

And I listen with something strangely like satisfaction as their clatter is muffled by the thick, expensive, dark red carpet. I think about drinking more wine. I roll onto my chest, and scrape my hair away from my face. The, suddenly oddly rough, silk pillows pressing against my cheeks, my lips, my skin. I don't like it. Suffocating, oddly intimate. God. I roll onto my back once again.

With my eyes squeezed closed, I wonder how people sleep with other people. Not sex. Sleeping. Something far more intimate than a quick drunken fuck in the semi-darkness, where all you can smell is their hot sweat and all you can think about is how quickly this panting, oily skinned man can reach orgasm. And then tell him to pull on his beer-drenched clothes and get gone. Leaving you something more than just unsatisfied. Alone, smoking in the shadows. Wishing you weren't so sober. Touching yourself and thinking of-

No.

I can't begin to imagine sleeping together though. What that must be like. All limbs and skin, bodies drenched in cooling, stale sweat. Slipping into unconsciousness together. Together. The sound of their heartbeat somehow worming into your dreams. Unsettling. Their breathing, hot breath colliding with your skin. Tasting of the inside of their mouth. Vile. How much you would have to trust someone, to let them see you like that. In the greyest part of the night, they could watch you, read you. Be there when you're at your most vulnerable. They would see you like that, night after night, and still want to be there. Still love you, perhaps. I can't imagine it.

On the backs of my eyelids, I watch a slow identity parade. The film unsteady and flickering. All the men I've ever slept with, from a sixteen year old boy, his jawline sharp as though it had been newly chiselled, smeared with a smattering of spots, to the sharp-suited city boy with his face blurred by the comforting hush of alcohol. I could not imagine letting any of them hold me as I slept. Hot hands on my cool skin, as though, during those seemingly endless nights, they owned me.

And then, unbidden, I see Nikki's face dance before my closed eyes. Her face as she stood in Michael's office and simply looked at me. There was no thick concrete barrier behind her eyes, I could precisely read almost her every thought in her startlingly honest eyes. And I read...No. Good god, no. I mentally shake myself.

But I can't help but see the door slamming behind Nikki as she left Michael's office. The finality of it. As though I would perhaps never get another chance. Maybe I won't. No. I don't want another chance. I don't.

And the scene changes, with that unnoticeable fluidity of a dream. And I see a pigtailed, six-year-old Sonya balancing precariously on my mother's knee. And her face isn't lined, and she's looking at my little baby sister with glittering recognition sparkling in her eyes. Because she knows everything there is to know about this button-nosed, grinning little child. And they're both laughing about absolutely nothing at all. And I want to be able to laugh with them. More than anything, I want someone to hold me like my mother is holding my little sister. But my arms are oddly heavy, and suddenly I realise that I'm bound and gagged and chocking as I try screaming for help. And when I'm miraculously freed, shaking off my bonds as only a dreamer can, and I'm racing towards them. And then, and only then does my mother finally look at me. But she's suddenly an old woman again, and her face is lined and her eyes are thick with the misty film of time. And she doesn't recognise me at all.

And suddenly Nikki's face once again. Her blue eyes wide. And then, only then, when I'm on the very verge of unconsciousness, can I read that nameless shadow in her eyes. And I know, with the unshaking certainty that only alcohol can give me, that she was mere milliseconds away from kissing me. Hotly. And I know that her kisses would feel like that first flush of spring on a mid February day. And I've already been pulled too far into sleep to go back now, and tell myself that even the idea is wrong. Because the way it seems to me, right then, when I'm a little more than tipsy and alone in my bedroom with nothing but scarlet lights and freezing red sheets, is that the voices in my head that are screaming are far louder than those tying me down.

And this is the last thing I think of before I slip into real, heavy, drunken sleep. Dreamless, thick, and heavenly.


End file.
